A Unproductive Fun Week

I went a week without doing anything creative. I did no writing and no recording. It was a tad unplanned but also a tad expected. Let me to explain.

The Game

For those of you who read my most recent newsletter, you may remember the following snippet:

🎮Playing - Final Fantasy XVI (Demo). As I'm typing this, I actually have the full game now in my possession. The reason I bought the game is because I downloaded the demo from Playstation Store and was blown away by it and knew I needed to get it as soon as possible. Unlike more recent Final Fantasy games, this is set in a medieval era, which I always prefer over more recent sci-fi-esque settings. The animations, both story driven and battle driven, are insane, and thanks to the PS5, load times were non-existent. I can't wait to get stuck into the rest of the game.

And so, with the game in my possession, I spent every hour possible playing this game. I played most of Saturday, all day Sunday, and then every evening after work I went straight home to eat dinner and sit down and play. I was very invested. The story that began with the demo continued to hook me in with the full game, and I was willing to sacrifice a lot of other things to keep playing, including sleep.

The Week

Since starting this website and also recording some Youtube videos, I have been actively managing my time better so that I can work, do housework, be social and create content. Some evenings I came home from work and was straight on the laptop typing out an article. Or I would record a video just sitting in my apartment to get a feel for it. I started using Notion and Todoist to plan better, and it worked really well. I have always been quite anti-app in the sense that when I see a video or article title saying 'this app will change your life' my eyes roll into the back of my skull. I don't buy the faff that an app can change your life. And I still don't. But where I will concede these apps do well is in giving the user the opportunity to more effectively manage their lives. They are very much tools for individuals who are willing to work with it, rather than a all-powerful app that will save you from yourself. And for weeks I making great use of these tools. Until this week.

With the arrival of the game, the apps (and my system) might as well have been non-existent. No amount of reminders or planning were going to motivate me to do something that was only secondary on my list of preferences. I wanted to play the game. And so, I played the game.

I found great conflict when this was happening because I didn't properly plan for it to happen. I should have declared this week a gaming week, and I would have been very content coming home from work each day and simply playing. Instead, I came home from work each day with every intention of playing, but feeling bad for playing because I wasn't doing anything else that I knew I should probably also do.

This is my key take away lesson from this week. It's ok to have fun. It's ok to binge a new game. It's ok to let other things slack. But for the sake of myself and my contentment, I need to reconcile it in my head beforehand that this week will be a different week than the one before. And that's ok. It's good to give yourself the time and space to do something you enjoy, whilst letting some responsibility slacken for a while.

The End

It's not the end. I still haven't finished the game. I've been playing it a lot, every day in fact. But I am still not finished.

I will finish it. It is an amazing game. An absolute work of art. I can't wait to see the finale of the game and get some of the storyline mysteries resolved. Now, however, I have had my initial binge and I'm ready to get back to writing and filming. If I had forced myself to write or film during the past week when all I really wanted to do was play, I would have resented the creative activities and produced rather uninspiring content. Writing for this website and recording videos for Youtube is a lot of fun for me. I don't think I do either of these things overly well, but the more I do them the more fun I have and (I hope) the more I will improve.

This week I wanted to have fun, as always, and so I played ALOT. This coming week I will continue to want to have fun and I will most definitely be playing too. But I'll also be writing and recording and doing some other things too. All in the pursuit of fun. It might even be productive.

Getting back to recording. Check out my video below.